I have an ISY994i equipped with the Z-Wave daughter-board. I initially purchased the ISY to work with my Insteon devices but now am moving to more Z-Wave devices. I currently have about 15 Z-Wave devices. My home is relatively small and all the Z-Wave devices are in close proximity to each other. But I am seeing occasional delays in device control. When I click the "Query" button in the Admin Console for a specific Z-Wave device most of the time I get a single response in the Event Viewer but often I get several apparently redundant responses. I've attached a screen shot below:

Is this normal? I've interrogated the Z-Wave devices and they all seem to be aware of multiple neighbors so my mesh should be solid but I don't understand what I'm seeing in the Event Viewer.

Thoughts?

-Wes

 

Edited June 4, 20223 yr by Wes Westhaver

I'm in no way a Z-Wave guru, sounds like we're somewhat on the same path, with the fall of Insteon I'm moving all my nodes to Z-Wave in my 994i, I had the dongle for years to talk to my door lock but now I'm going Z-Wave throughout.  There's talk of a "Popcorn" effect which I think I experienced the other day, I think I too loaded up the comm buffer by pressing the button multiple times but once it finally began to talk the lights were on and off numerous times.  This "Popcorn" effect I believe they were talking about due to the Mesh topology and it looks like when your nodes respond they hit all the other repeaters then those individual repeaters are all talking back to the controller.  This is just a guess.  Look for Z-Wave and Popcorn and see what you can find.  I've found that the longer my ISY is running the better my network seems to get.  You could also force queries on your main network as this may help.  I've also used Update Neighbors and Synchronize a few times and that may be helping?  One way or another with my network here (~25 nodes) it seems to get better the longer it runs.  I've been trying to find "Z-Wave for Dummies" to learn more about the protocol but all I've came up with are the tech. docs. from Silicone Labs and that's going to take some studying to put all that together.  Try update neighbors then send a few commands and query's out and see if that helps.  And you can too view the network properties of your nodes in the Event Viewer and it shows the last route/path and that has helped me to understand how the nodes have been routing and I've added a couple repeaters to help clean things up.  I found a scene controller on my living room that was actually routing through a node at the opposite end of the house.  Good luck & I'll keep an eye on this thread and comment if/as I learn more...

3 hours ago, GJ Software Products said:

I'm in no way a Z-Wave guru, sounds like we're somewhat on the same path, with the fall of Insteon I'm moving all my nodes to Z-Wave in my 994i, I had the dongle for years to talk to my door lock but now I'm going Z-Wave throughout.  There's talk of a "Popcorn" effect which I think I experienced the other day, I think I too loaded up the comm buffer by pressing the button multiple times but once it finally began to talk the lights were on and off numerous times.  This "Popcorn" effect I believe they were talking about due to the Mesh topology and it looks like when your nodes respond they hit all the other repeaters then those individual repeaters are all talking back to the controller.  This is just a guess.  Look for Z-Wave and Popcorn and see what you can find.  I've found that the longer my ISY is running the better my network seems to get.  You could also force queries on your main network as this may help.  I've also used Update Neighbors and Synchronize a few times and that may be helping?  One way or another with my network here (~25 nodes) it seems to get better the longer it runs.  I've been trying to find "Z-Wave for Dummies" to learn more about the protocol but all I've came up with are the tech. docs. from Silicone Labs and that's going to take some studying to put all that together.  Try update neighbors then send a few commands and query's out and see if that helps.  And you can too view the network properties of your nodes in the Event Viewer and it shows the last route/path and that has helped me to understand how the nodes have been routing and I've added a couple repeaters to help clean things up.  I found a scene controller on my living room that was actually routing through a node at the opposite end of the house.  Good luck & I'll keep an eye on this thread and comment if/as I learn more...

That's not the popcorn effect. Has nothing to do with repeaters. It's the fact that each device responds 1 at a time vs simultaneously like insteon. For example, add 10 relays to a scene and each will turn off individually. Do the same with insteon and you'll hear a single click in unison. 

Ok, but look at the Event Viewer output at the hyperlink Wes included, he query's the device, the EXPLORE TX goes out to ZW041_1, you see the TX go out, then multiple RX from the same device address (ZW041_1).  I was thinking that the reply from ZW041_1 is being cached for repeat/re-transmission on/from multiple nodes in the network then each of those receive (RX) packets is coming from the multiple repeating nodes in the network.  Yea, I believe Insteon is Multicast vs. one packet per node in Z-Wave.  All the RX show the same Z-Wave address, ZW041_1 and yet you see not every request has the same number of replies.  Maybe ZW041 is just confused and spitting out multiple packets.  Or maybe just timing but that don't make much sense to me?  Wes, do you see this same thing when you individually query other nodes in your network?

Check this out.  We must be running different versions.  I get more details in the Event Viewer when I Query an individual device but I don't know how to truly read these lines.  I guess those at the bottom are from an Insteon Device but you do see I get a bunch of packets from ZW013_1.  I wonder what a D2D Event is and [D2D-CMP nnnn] is?  Maybe a different Property on the node?:

6 hours ago, GJ Software Products said:

I'm in no way a Z-Wave guru, sounds like we're somewhat on the same path, with the fall of Insteon I'm moving all my nodes to Z-Wave in my 994i, I had the dongle for years to talk to my door lock but now I'm going Z-Wave throughout.  There's talk of a "Popcorn" effect which I think I experienced the other day, I think I too loaded up the comm buffer by pressing the button multiple times but once it finally began to talk the lights were on and off numerous times.  This "Popcorn" effect I believe they were talking about due to the Mesh topology and it looks like when your nodes respond they hit all the other repeaters then those individual repeaters are all talking back to the controller.  This is just a guess.  Look for Z-Wave and Popcorn and see what you can find.

I see the rapid ON/OFF/ON/OFF... sequence sometimes and it is quite disconcerting. It seems that you can't send multiple Z-Wave commands without waiting a few seconds between the commands to let the network settle down. But I believe the popcorn effect that others have talked about is different. My understanding of the popcorn effect is that Z-Wave commands each device in succession when setting a scene instead of the Insteon 'everyone responds at the same time' (which is a very nice Insteon feature.)

6 hours ago, GJ Software Products said:

I've found that the longer my ISY is running the better my network seems to get.

I've noticed that too. And adding more Z-Wave devices also seems to help as well.

6 hours ago, GJ Software Products said:

You could also force queries on your main network as this may help.  I've also used Update Neighbors and Synchronize a few times and that may be helping?

Yes, I've spent quite a bit of time with these options and observing the results in the Event Viewer. I also ran the "Z-Wave | Synchronize Nodes | New & Deleted" which found about a half dozen Z-Wave devices that no longer exist in my network. Clearing out the missing Z-Wave devices seemed to make the network respond faster. I'm assuming (maybe wrongly) that the Z-Wave daughter-board may have been getting slowed down by trying to communicate with the non-existent devices and needed to time-out before moving on. I really don't know enough to be certain of this hypothesis. 

6 hours ago, GJ Software Products said:

I've been trying to find "Z-Wave for Dummies" to learn more about the protocol but all I've came up with are the tech. docs. from Silicone Labs and that's going to take some studying to put all that together.  Try update neighbors then send a few commands and query's out and see if that helps.  And you can too view the network properties of your nodes in the Event Viewer and it shows the last route/path and that has helped me to understand how the nodes have been routing and I've added a couple repeaters to help clean things up.  I found a scene controller on my living room that was actually routing through a node at the opposite end of the house.  Good luck & I'll keep an eye on this thread and comment if/as I learn more...

I am in the same boat. When Insteon first came out I read all the protocol docs I could get my hands on and was impressed by the amount of thought that went into the Insteon design. I certainly wish they were still around. I'd like to get to the same level of familiarity with the Z-Wave protocol but it may take some time to get there. I've been looking at the "Z-Wave | Show Information in Event Viewer" and all of my Z-Wave devices appear to have numerous neighbors and that is why I'm pretty confident that my mesh is solid.

 

Edited June 4, 20223 yr by Wes Westhaver

41 minutes ago, GJ Software Products said:

Ok, but look at the Event Viewer output at the hyperlink Wes included, he query's the device, the EXPLORE TX goes out to ZW041_1, you see the TX go out, then multiple RX from the same device address (ZW041_1).  I was thinking that the reply from ZW041_1 is being cached for repeat/re-transmission on/from multiple nodes in the network then each of those receive (RX) packets is coming from the multiple repeating nodes in the network.  Yea, I believe Insteon is Multicast vs. one packet per node in Z-Wave.  All the RX show the same Z-Wave address, ZW041_1 and yet you see not every request has the same number of replies.  Maybe ZW041 is just confused and spitting out multiple packets.  Or maybe just timing but that don't make much sense to me?  Wes, do you see this same thing when you individually query other nodes in your network?

Most of the time a query returns a single reply but I randomly get multiple replies from other Z-Wave devices also.

51 minutes ago, GJ Software Products said:

Check this out.  We must be running different versions.  I get more details in the Event Viewer when I Query an individual device but I don't know how to truly read these lines.  I guess those at the bottom are from an Insteon Device but you do see I get a bunch of packets from ZW013_1.  I wonder what a D2D Event is and [D2D-CMP nnnn] is?  Maybe a different Property on the node?:

I'm running ISY994i firmware version 5.3.4 and Z-Wave version 6.82.01. It would be great if there was some documentation that explains all of the possible Event Viewer entries. There's a lot of cryptic shorthand in there that I'm certain is very helpful if you can interpret it.

Btw, I wrote a small web application in Zojo that runs on a Raspberry Pi (24/7) and I use the application to trigger most of my scenes and programs. The web application uses the ISY994i's REST interface to talk to the ISY. This application has been running great for over a year and both my wife and I use it constantly. I like the fact that whenever I need to make changes or additions to the app and I recompile it the app auto-magically appears on our smartphones (since it is web based) rather than having to download and re-install like you would have to do if it was a native smartphone app. This makes updates non-disruptive for the wife and that is a *really* good thing.

 

Edited June 4, 20223 yr by Wes Westhaver

5 minutes ago, Wes Westhaver said:

I'm running ISY994i firmware version 5.3.4 and Z-Wave version 6.82.01. It would be great if there was some documentation that explains all of the possible Event Viewer entries. There's a lot of cryptic shorthand in there that I'm certain is very helpful if you can interpret it.

Btw, I wrote a small web application in Zojo that runs on a Raspberry Pi (24/7) and I use the application to trigger most of my scenes and programs. The web application uses the ISY994i's REST interface to talk to the ISY. This application has been running great for over a year and both my wife and I use it constantly. I like the fact that whenever I need to make changes or additions to the app and I recompile it the app auto-magically appears on our smartphones (since it is web based) rather than having to download and re-install like you would have to do if it was a native smartphone app. This makes updates non-disruptive for the wife and that is a *really* good thing.

Nice.  I haven't explored REST on my 994i.  I'm at 5.3.4 and 6.82.01 too.  I just found reference to those D2D Events being Device to Device but I haven't done any direct linking with any of my Z-Wave stuff.  I'm wondering if it's artifacts from Insteon because I had put these Z-Wave devices (12 & 13) into an old Insteon Scene and I'm wondering if ISY didn't write D2D links into my new Z-Wave nodes???

5 hours ago, GJ Software Products said:

Nice.  I haven't explored REST on my 994i.  I'm at 5.3.4 and 6.82.01 too.  I just found reference to those D2D Events being Device to Device but I haven't done any direct linking with any of my Z-Wave stuff.  I'm wondering if it's artifacts from Insteon because I had put these Z-Wave devices (12 & 13) into an old Insteon Scene and I'm wondering if ISY didn't write D2D links into my new Z-Wave nodes???

Insteon doesn't have anything to do with zwave. Zwave direct association does not work in that manner so what insteon does/did would have no bearing. 

8 hours ago, lilyoyo1 said:

Insteon doesn't have anything to do with zwave. Zwave direct association does not work in that manner so what insteon does/did would have no bearing. 

That makes sense but how did these associations get created in my Z-Wave devices?  I removed the Insteon devices from the scene then added the Z-Wave devices.  I have to think that the isy created those associations when the Z-Wave devices were added to the scene...  Then too, I'm just next to guessing D2D in the Event Viewer is a device to device packet/communication.  Like Wes said detailed docu in the Event Viewer shorthand would be great!  Maybe I've yet to find it but so far haven't came up with anything.